1. Field of the Invention
The disclosures discussed herein relate to a liquid-jet head configured to discharge a recording liquid such as ink, a liquid-jet device having the liquid-jet head, and an image forming apparatus having the liquid-jet device, such as an inkjet printer, a facsimile machine, a copier, or a multifunctional apparatus having a combination of these functions.
2. Description of the Related Art
An inkjet recording apparatus is generally known in the art as an image forming apparatus including a liquid-jet device having a liquid-jet head. The inkjet recording apparatus is configured to make a record on a sheet by discharging a recording material, namely, ink from the liquid-jet head onto the sheet. Such an inkjet recording apparatus may be able to record a high-precision color image on the sheet at a high speed. Note that the sheet indicated above is not limited to a sheet of paper, but includes any medium including an overhead projector (OHP) film to which a recording liquid such as ink is adhered. Such a medium may also be refereed to as a recording medium or a recording sheet. The inkjet recording apparatus has recently been utilized in an industrial system for a textile printer.
The liquid-jet head (e.g., see Patent Documents 1 to 7 noted below) mounted on the above-described inkjet recording apparatus generally includes a plurality of nozzle arrays, a plurality of individual liquid chambers connected to the nozzle arrays, and a recording material reservoir having a relatively large capacity, namely, a common liquid chamber connected to the individual liquid chambers.
The above-described liquid-jet head may be able to form any image on demand by selectively applying energy to the individual liquid chambers. The medium to which energy is applied may include a piezoelectric element, a heater tip, and the like.
It has become increasingly required for the liquid-jet head to be capable of outputting higher definition images at higher speeds. With respect to the former requirement, the number of nozzles and the density of the nozzles tend to increase while intervals between the individual liquid chambers are narrowed. In addition, the frequency of the energy application tends to become higher with respect to the former requirement. With respect to the latter requirement, an attempt has been made to increase a length of the recording head to provide a so-called line-type printer to cover the entire width region of the recording medium.
In focusing on a specific individual liquid chamber, a recording material inside the specific individual liquid chamber may receive a pressure change due to the energy applied to the individual liquid chamber. The pressure change may be propagated to the common liquid chamber. The pressure change not only affects the recording material inside the specific individual liquid chamber currently being focused on, but also consequently affects other recording materials inside the individual liquid chambers adjacent to the specific individual liquid chamber. The aforementioned effect may be called “mutual interference”. The mutual interference may induce unintended liquid discharge or an unstable discharge status, which may disturb the formation of the high-definition image as an output result. Hence, there are disclosed various configurations of the liquid-jet head including a damper for suppressing the pressure change.
An example of the above configuration may be as follows. That is, the configuration of the liquid-jet head includes, as a damper, space parts containing air disposed adjacent to each other via a thin film, the space parts including a supply tube to supply a recording material to a common liquid chamber, and a narrow tube connecting the space parts to an external space of the liquid-jet head. The narrow tube is disposed so as to prevent the recording material inside the common liquid chamber from drying while causing the space parts to serve as a damper that restrictively connects the space parts and the external space.
With this configuration, even through such space parts are completely decoupled and each of the decoupled space parts further includes a plurality of separate spaces, the above-described narrow tubes may need to be disposed in each of the separate spaces of a corresponding one of the decoupled spaces. This may result in a complicated configuration and eventually raise the cost of production.